For me, they're not even tier bosses: Moon'airu Sensei and Malice Demon are nearly unbeatable.

Occasionally the no-special-skills boss (Diamond, I can't remember his name) also has a ridiculous card combo.

Deathfog

02-24-2015, 10:56 PM

Moon'airu tends to freak out when he has too many tunneled troops, not even a matter of him being too hard. Twice I've had to conced as the AI wouldn't progress out of its starting turn phase.

redman2112

02-25-2015, 05:13 AM

War bot for me is the most annoying since every 5 turns he can wipe your board, even faster than that sometimes.

The other one that bothers me is Uzme since it can RNG screw you turn 3 if she gets a real good troop.

Miwa

02-25-2015, 11:33 AM

War Bot and Moon'ariu for me. If moon gets the jump, it can be a slog, and oh god the board wipes from war bot. Plus if you don't remove reactor bot right away, it smashes face.

ossuary

02-25-2015, 12:56 PM

Personally I would agree that the War Bot's deck is the most ridiculous. There's a reason you're only supposed to get to use 4 copies of non-basic shards in your deck, and having your opponent gain 3-4 charges almost every turn is pretty insane, since it means he can wipe your whole board every 2-3 turns - unless of course you're running artifacts yourself, in which case it's just very annoyingly strong instead of outright busted. This deck is a prime candidate for a mercenary sub-out. I wish we were allowed to use sideboards for the arena, so we could at least swap in SOME removal to slow him down a little bit. There aren't nearly enough artifact-using champions in the arena to justify running an anti-dwarf deck the whole way through.

Zurai

02-25-2015, 01:30 PM

Malice demon isn't so hard for me. I have the most problems with Psychotic Anarchist and Avalanche Giant, personally. They both have the potential to get a massive advantage if they go first. Anarchist can easily deal 11-13 damage to you before you get a second turn. The Avalanche Giant, again, can get a massive advantage quickly with haste troops that grow stronger every time they attack.

Anarchist can be beaten off a strong start with a Heat Wave, but Heat Wave is utterly useless against Avalanche Giant.

FlyingMeatchip

02-25-2015, 01:39 PM

That Angel deck had me overwhelmed.

Miwa

02-25-2015, 02:40 PM

This deck is a prime candidate for a mercenary sub-out. I wish we were allowed to use sideboards for the arena, so we could at least swap in SOME removal to slow him down a little bit. There aren't nearly enough artifact-using champions in the arena to justify running an anti-dwarf deck the whole way through.
Yeah, I figure I'll have a mercenary deck that is pretty much extinction + heat wave, and a 2nd that is either anti-dwarf or charge-artifact. Seems the easiest way to deal with Moon'ariu and War Bot.

Zurai

02-25-2015, 02:45 PM

And yeah, War Bot is just simply not fun to play against. His entire gimmick is just patently unfair and there's no way to fight against it without completely screwing your chances of beating every other deck except maybe Eurig. 10 charges for a one-sided voiding total board wipe is fairly inexpensive to begin with. Coupling that with breaking the 4-card limit on Crackling Vortices and getting a charge every time he plays any of his other cards and you just completely rob the match of any semblance of fun.

The one card which could reasonably be included in normal decks and would actually make the match somewhat fair is banned in PvE (Subtle Striker).

ossuary

02-25-2015, 03:46 PM

No, there are other valid strategies. It's just extremely punishing against a troop-based deck. Unfortunately, all of the arena decks are troop-based, and are hard to fight against if you're not running a lot of troops yourself (the synergies of the champ powers make them generally very good at both racing and recovering from wipes). War Bot just needs a lot of non-troop damage (a burn deck, in other words).

I've had a limited amount of success in the arena with a burn deck (some of the champs are just too fast), but I was also thinking a hand destruction deck might do nicely. If he can't manage to get those vortexes into play because you dump most of his hand out, and he hardly has any troops in play because you discarded them as well, you can race him a lot easier, even if you do get your own troops wiped halfway through the match.

When I first saw the newest version of him on this iteration of the test server (last time, his wipe cost 20, which is far less insane), I started scheming about some kind of ludicrous goblin cooking pot focused deck that kept recycling them over and over to keep him at zero charges indefinitely, but I never actually tried to put it together yet... it might be too janky even for me. :D

Zurai

02-25-2015, 04:08 PM

The only successful burn decks I've seen still use constants (Inferno and/or Heart of Fire) to help bridge the gap, and guess what? War Bot voids those, too. Hand disruption might work eventually, but not right now. Charge disruption just plain won't work with the way he's currently set up, he gets way too many charges per turn.

That said, my Darkspire Army of Cinders deck is unbeaten vs him (not that Army helps). 7 board wipes and the ability to get in damage then remove troops to a zone his charge power doesn't hit (burrowing or hand, via Minions of Yazukan and Xentoth's Inquisitors) has been enough so far. It's just not a fun match.

Avaian

02-25-2015, 04:46 PM

Against War Bot, I have found Yesterday to work really well against him.

ossuary

02-25-2015, 05:09 PM

Sure, but it means you have to leave 5 resources open every turn once he gets to 6 charges, and you still only get 2-3 turns at the MOST after you play the yesterday to put pressure back on him (and he'll always have plenty of troops to play out and charges to gain the next few turns, since you just handed them all back to him with your Yesterday).

Countering his troops doesn't help to stop the void effect either, since interrupted cards still count as having been played for effects that look at that sort of thing (Wrenlocke, War Bot's passive, etc.).

Xavon

02-25-2015, 10:39 PM

I have yet to defeat Eldritch Dreamer. Permanent penalty to non-flier creatures is a killer for most of my decks.

redman2112

02-26-2015, 02:46 AM

I finally got a win off of War Bot! Used a Solo Sapphire with an emphasis on flight. My strategy was to get him to use his charge power the first time on just an Ancestral Spirit. Then the second time he used it I had a yesterday and since he had played a troop that turn it slowed him down a lot.

I get the feeling I'm going to have to try with an actual tier 1 deck sometime.

silverlocke

02-26-2015, 08:39 PM

Sensei is so overpowered.

By turn 6 he had 10 troops out all 3atk+ some 5atk. Due to his power keywords like crush and lethal are all over the place. Even with PvE Equipment, teapots and angels I can't match him.

2993

I also agree on War Bot. It is nearly impossible to beat either of them. Thankfully sometimes I get them on the early tier.

2994

Kurasa

02-26-2015, 11:07 PM

I agree that the current version of War Bot is really hard. It's tough playing around one-sided board wipes every few turns.

Tazelbain

02-27-2015, 09:16 AM

It feels like they are covering up for bad AI by making charge power ridiculous. An amoeba could win games with War Bots powers.

Miwa

02-27-2015, 11:11 AM

Well, that's what PvE really is going to be, more like puzzles to solve, not a sparring partner on even terms. I expect things far, far more abusive than what we've seen so far, considering how abusive player decks can get.

bwarner

02-28-2015, 07:13 AM

My Jank Bot deck had no problems against War Bot. If you can't beat em, join em. :D

malloc31

02-28-2015, 07:59 AM

any one else feel if they ever get the AI actually working well they will have to re-tune everything since it will be too hard?

crimsonc

03-03-2015, 08:35 PM

The Concubunny boss deck just completely ripped me apart. Hadn't seen it before tonight in the Arena. Was on a perfect run through tier 1 and tier 2. Had absolutely destroyed that damn angel deck (want to drop an angel a turn, fine, meet my swift-strike buffed royal falcons). My deck is R/E aggro. 4 turn killed. Twice in a row. Didn't even waste my third strike. Just took my loot and skulked away.

Both times, she just spawned crazy bunnies all of which buffed the heck out of each other. on turn 4 of the second game, she swung with a 7/6, two 5/4s, and a 4/3. I had one blocker after having to chump block the turn before to stay alive. I'm not even sure what I could have done, even with a perfect draw. Maybe if I got all my burns I could have killed every bunny as they came out, but I'm not even sure I could have played them fast enough with how they buffed. I don't even.

ossuary

03-03-2015, 09:05 PM

If you have a nice PVP card collection already, I've had a great deal of success with a blood/ruby removal deck. Zared champ, 4x heat waves, 4x extinction, 4x life siphon, burns, murders, ragefires, etc. with a few bombs to finish them off once you run their troop counts down. You can beat quite a lot of opponents this way since they don't tend to have card drawing capabilities to outpace you (with the exception of certain matchups like Malice Demon, since you need a lot of quick speed answers to deal with his champ ability). But board wipes completely devastate decks like Uzume who rely on swarms to win.

Gwaer

03-03-2015, 10:46 PM

any one else feel if they ever get the AI actually working well they will have to re-tune everything since it will be too hard?

I actually think they're shooting for incredibly hard to complete a perfect arena run. So no I don't think they'll re-tune.

vickrpg

03-04-2015, 01:16 PM

Uzume and sensei. If I don't draw perfectly, they just win.

Princess Cory: Sometimes stupidly easy, and sometimes he hard-casts a triumvirate.
Did you know he has triumvirates in his deck? "Ingenuity engine. Hex Engine. dwarven Turbine. Hex engine. Triumvirate. lol"

Jeevus

03-05-2015, 03:42 AM

I think that alot of the decks are damn crazy. My personal nemesis is Xarlox. Moon'iaru is always close, but flying wins against him. The only thing that matters against most opponents is speed. It's a bit sad, but i feel with heavy aggro, you shouldnt have a problem to win all matches, unless they go super crazy. Zoltog is also one son of a b....He is probably as hard as xarlox and war bot for me, depending on his start.

I played mono blood shin'hare, went through with ease, except xarlox dat beast. turn 2 5/5, turn 4 the next one milled. hard to recover from that without mas removal. Thank god AI doesn't understand the difference between crush and no crush. Exactly the reason why he doesnt understand that a 1/5 killipede is deadlier than it looks like xD.

The best runs however was with dia robots (One eye open). Damn fast and access to unicorns. Ah and Mimeobot on Angel of Dawns is kinda fun too ^_^. Did 3 runs so far with that deck and all of them ended up being perfects. Guess Humans is the next thing im goin to try out.

malloc31

03-05-2015, 09:46 AM

I actually think they're shooting for incredibly hard to complete a perfect arena run. So no I don't think they'll re-tune.

To me it seems if the AI made no errors, everything 2nd tier and beyond would be very hard to beat without the AI being shard screwed. They just have such advantages in champion abilities and charge powers and most of the decks are comparable to using the best available cards. I think just making it to the 4th tier would almost never happen.

Gwaer

03-05-2015, 11:30 AM

That seems like exactly how it should be, you get to 2nd tier and farm up PVE equipment/cards to help you with 3rd/4th tiers. Some equipment combinations are fantastic. If we could beat the arena even 30% of the time with a straight up pvp deck I feel like the arena isn't doing its job.

Xavon

03-05-2015, 09:19 PM

Fudge biscuits. Just had Uzume with Command Tower challenge. Was perfect up to the boss of tier 3, and then she smoked me in three straight.